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Interview with Ryan Bell, Former Adventist Pastor

Welcome to Viewpoints: Adventist Perspectives on Peace, Justice and Righteousness. For 19 years Ryan Bell was a pastor, most recently the senior pastor of the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church. In March 2013 he resigned his position due to theological and practical differences. In January 2014, Bell began a yearlong journey exploring the limits of theism as well as the atheist landscape in the United States, an experiment known as Year Without God. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and a Doctor of Ministry in Missional Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

AToday: Why did you decide to do the year-long experiment in this way—blog, events, etc.?

Bell: It came up very off-handedly over lunch. There was no real strategy. I was feeling a little frustrated with my unemployment and my theological questions that were coming to the surface a bit more. I had just picked up a book at a neighborhood bookstore called Religion without God, when I was meeting a friend for lunch. We started talking about why I chose that book. I’ve been drawn to Alain De Botton, who had written Religion for Atheists. I knew there was this new literature, and I was really interested in it because I wasn’t sure if I believed in God anymore. I told my friend at lunch, “Maybe I’ll become an atheist for a year and just see how that feels.”

I thought I might write a book in the end, but my friend encouraged me to write the blog. He said, “I think people would be really interested in reading about your journey because I think a lot of people are in a similar place, and I think it would be interesting to follow along.”

And because I have an outlet on the Huffington Post, it seemed appropriate to post it there as well. So I put it up, and they published it, and it just went crazy, which was a huge surprise to me.

AToday: So you didn’t expect so much coverage?

Bell: Yeah, yeah. I just read again today a comment on the Spectrum blog. Someone said they were sympathetic to my doubts, they just didn’t see why I had to be so self-promoting and make a big publicity thing out of it. Which of course I didn’t do that. That sort of happened. I say this to people: I challenge you to make a media splash. Try it and see how it goes. I’ve tried before with church stuff, and at PATH we’re constantly trying to get our name out more. It’s difficult. You never know what’s going to strike a chord with people.

I had intended to visit some skeptics’ and atheists’ gatherings and meet some people. When you meet people they want you to meet other people, and the next thing you know you’re invited to this thing and that thing. It really evolved organically like that. There wasn’t any foresight into trying to create a viral campaign.

AToday: As you look back, what do you see as positives and negatives to having it such a public journey?

Bell: The negative for me is that I had less time for myself. I’ve had less time for my own thinking, reading, writing. Especially at the beginning of the year and then at the end of the year.

The benefit of doing it publicly is that there are so many people who can identify with my experience and have been in a similar kind of place. They may come to a different conclusion than I have, but I think people feel validated when they hear about somebody else who did something similar or is in a similar place.

It’s very pastoral actually. There is a nonstop stream of people who say, “If you have any time, I’d love to chat.” Right now I don’t have that kind of time, but I do intend for that to be part of what I do with my life going forward. I do want to talk with people who are in between. I want to try to create a space in whatever way—and I’m not sure exactly in what way yet—for people to feel safe and not to have fear around asking these big existential questions.

It does have a pastoral quality to it, which is weird because I’m in this transition myself. I really don’t feel that qualifies me, especially during this past year, to be a guide for anybody else. But people are looking for role models. It’s pretty interesting how people put me in that role the same way they did when I was a pastor. I didn’t love it then; I don’t love it now. But there’s something fulfilling about just being with people in their journey.

AToday: There are many Jews who are atheists in one sense but who are still Jewish in another. Is this a parallel to where you are with Adventism?

Bell: That’s interesting because one of my very first lunch appointments in January of last year was with a rabbi friend of mine whose first comment was, “You’re on a very Jewish journey. Half of my congregation are atheists, so you’d fit right in.” I knew there were plenty of atheist Jews, but I didn’t know that atheist Jews went to shul.

Atheism is not that threatening to Jews, liberal Jews especially, because the narratives give shape to them culturally, and it’s not about the ontology of God as much as it is about ethics and the moral framework that the Jewish story—whether it’s exactly true according to the Torah or not—gives their family, their culture, their community.

Am I that connected to Adventism? My favorite part of not being religious is actually not being Adventist. Sometimes I miss Christianity; I almost never miss Adventism. But my friends are there, so that’s the rub. I have a lot of friends who are Adventists.

The longer I’ve been away from it—almost two years now—the more I feel that there are some things that are inherent within Adventism that are really destructive. And I know people who are trying to make Adventism a safe place for women and for gay and lesbian and transgender people. There are people who are trying to make Adventism safer, but it’s not in and of itself a safe thing for people, especially for people on the margins of life and society.

I wish the “atheist Jew” analogy were more apt. I do. But if the analogy were “Is Ryan an atheist Christian like there are atheist Jews?” then I would feel a lot more connected to that idea because I think the narrative about Jesus has real ethical value and narrative value.

I think it’s important to say that my friendships with people in the Adventist community are certainly not contingent on what I think about the existence of God.

AToday: Are there any pieces of Adventist identity that you hold on to?

Bell: I’m not doing a very good job of practicing it at the moment, but I definitely think that the rhythm of Sabbath is something that is healthy and beautiful. It doesn’t need to be on any particular day, and it doesn’t have to be from God, but I think the practice of ceasing from work and being more attentive to the important people in your life and perhaps taking a day and giving away your time to others is a very healthy practice that I picked up as an Adventist.

I think my politics, which is ironic because I think my politics was one of the problems that I got into in Adventism. But I feel like my politics around peace and justice are actually things I learned from Christianity and in part from my attempt to make Adventism more relevant.

AToday: You studied pastoral ministry at Weimar. How do you see the journey or trajectory from there to where you are today? Is it marked more by continuity or discontinuity?

Bell: I’m going to wrestle with that more in some writing I’ll be doing this year. I don’t know if this is something that was part of my childhood upbringing or whether it was something that I learned along the way. But I think a fundamental impulse of conservatism is that there is this outside standard—whether it’s the Constitution in the United States or the Bible in Christianity. It’s the absolute standard and everyone has to accommodate their lives to that standard. Whereas I think I’ve always just been more classically liberal, where I thought people’s individual experiences and stories mattered a great deal. I needed to at least take into account as a serious part of my decision making process the experience of people. A concrete example, the Bible appears to say that homosexuality is a sin. But I knew lots of people who were gay who were wonderful people who loved God and wanted to be part of a congregation, so I had to really wrestle with those things.

Even though I was raised conservatively, I think there was always a seed of liberalism in me. And by liberalism I just mean that people’s personal experiences have to be taken into account. It’s not just words on a page—sort of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. I think I’ve always been more inclined to the spirit of the law than the letter. I think that seed of liberalism for me was always there somehow, so even though I was at Weimar I valued compassion or empathy. I don’t want to imply that conservatives aren’t sympathetic, but I think that hurting people matter, and our theology has to take into account the fact that people are hurting in unequal ways. So I see it as a natural progression from Weimar to where I am today.

AToday: Beyond religion, what do you think is the best contribution Adventism can make in the world today?

Bell: I think by being true to what I take to be the original Adventist impulse, which is to not be content with truth handed down from authorities before them and instead pursuing present truth. To me no matter what conclusion you arrive at about present truth, it’s that pursuit of present truth that is the impulse of Adventism. James and Ellen White and others didn’t want to accept their Methodist or Christian Connection as final. They saw something different or something more compelling or something their intellectual forebears left out or couldn’t see. I think that’s something the Adventist pioneers—and not just Adventists—said, “No, we’ve got to go for the truth no matter what. Even if it means we have to leave our churches. Even if it means we have to suffer some relationship breakups if our families and friends don’t see things as we do.”

I lost my jobs over the pursuit of the truth, but Adventist pioneers lost their jobs over it too. I disagree with their conclusions, but I think that spirit of searching for the truth and this idea that there’s present truth—always something new to be learned or discovered—that to me is an Adventist spirit.

AToday: I think it’s safe to assume that other pastors are dealing with questions, either about particular points of Adventist theology or with God more generally. What would you like to say to them?

Bell: I’ve been thinking about how much fear is involved in the process of having these big questions, especially for pastors. Not only have we been taught that this is the truth, but we’ve also been called to ministry. And that calling to ministry feels like an absolute too. We see that absolutism when a person leaves the ministry, and colleagues say, “Oh he left the ministry,” like they really betrayed God because God called them to ministry and God can’t be wrong.

So I think there’s a lot of fear, not only around having doubts about theology, but around saying, “Do I want to be a pastor for the rest of my life. Is that required? Am I being a total fraud if I decide not to?” And also around beliefs about the afterlife. Maybe I’ll burn in hell. We don’t have a burning hell the way Baptists do, but we still have a hell in which you don’t exist anymore. So that can be pretty bad if you’re expecting to live forever with family members in heaven or on the new earth.

So my message to pastors would be: have courage. The truth can stand on its own two feet. If your belief system is true, then you really don’t have anything to worry about. You should explore it and dig into it. And if it’s not true, wouldn’t you want to know that? It’s the same kind of thing that an Adventist Bible worker would say to a Catholic family in their living room. “Don’t be afraid. If Catholicism is correct, then you’re fine. But if it’s wrong and I’m right, wouldn’t you want to know that?” So I would say, “If evolution is true, and creation of the earth didn’t happen in six literal days or in six thousand or ten thousand years but over a much longer period of time… If that’s true, wouldn’t you want to know that? And if it’s not true and you’re right, then great.”

There’s so much fear that’s instilled in people, not just pastors, everyone around these off-limit topics.

And I would say too—and you haven’t asked this question—if you were to ask me what is the greatest freedom I’ve experienced this year, I’d say it’s the freedom to have all subjects open for inquiry. The Adventist Review article and other comments people have written have really emphasized this. “Well, it’s because he was reading those uninspired authors.” I think other people would just call that knowledge. Not all books are true and right, but I think if there’s a god, he gave us brains to use to sort through things. One of my atheist friends says, “If there’s a god, and God created me, and the brain or mind he created me with made me inquisitive, but then he didn’t provide sufficient evidence to satisfy my intellectual curiosity, then that god is just toying with me.” So that’s a problem for a lot of people. So I think that freedom to ask, Is the earth millions and millions of years old? Is the universe 14 billion years old? That’s a great question. We should ask that question. We should talk about it. We should explore it without having predetermined answers. And the same is true for God, Jesus, the Bible, or any other topic.

This goes for atheists too. I would say any skeptic or any secular person, if they’re being faithful to their values, and I come along and I say, “Look, I’ve got this really important evidence that there’s a god,” then that person should listen and pay attention to that.

Christians aren’t the only closed-minded people out there. Not all Christians are closed-minded, and not all closed-minded people are Christians.

AToday: You said in an interview that you would love for there to be a god. What did you mean by this?

Bell: It depends on which god we’re talking about. There are a lot of gods that it would not be a good thing if they were true—the Southern Baptist God or the Westboro Baptist Church God. I want nothing to do with that god. In fact I hope that god doesn’t exist.

I think what I meant was that I think many people who believe in God hold it as kind of a general statement. They haven’t really examined it closely. They haven’t felt a need to. It’s just a worldview concept, a concept that outside of me, outside of all of us, outside of the universe, there’s an intelligence. And if you’re loosely Christian, the idea is that this intelligence is benevolent and created us and loves us and wants to create a better future for all creatures. That’s a really nice idea. I would love for that to be true. That’s a beautiful story.

I think people have this grandfatherly picture of God. God is a judge—he’s not to be screwed with—but also he loves us and he wants us to prosper and be healthy and enjoy eternity with him. That idea I think is very attractive. I think if you drill down into it, it has problems, but on the surface, I think that’s how people have this positive idea about God. My whole life was spent trying to reconcile that kind of a god concept with my experience of life and the world.

AToday: How did you choose between an agnostic or an atheist position?

Bell: The way it’s explained in the skeptic community, agnosticism is a label that refers to epistemology. It’s a question about what you think you know or don’t know. So an agnostic is someone whose posture toward whatever topic is being discussed is “I don’t know.” But atheism pertains to the question of God’s existence. So the two terms are actually about two different things. Agnosticism is about how confident you are about your knowledge. Atheism or theism is the question about God’s existence. I describe myself as an agnostic atheist, which means that I don’t think there’s a god, but I don’t know for sure. And I don’t think anybody can know for sure. At least not yet.

Most atheists are open to the possibility of discovering there’s a god. Some prefer not to even think of themselves as atheists because that’s not the defining characteristic of their lives. They’re humanists or activists of various types; they just happen to not believe in God. It’s not a big deal to them. So I would say for someone who is purely agnostic, someone who genuinely doesn’t know—it’s almost like a 50-50 proposition that there’s a god or not a god. Most atheists that I know do not claim that they know that there’s not a god. They simply say, based on the evidence that I have, I don’t think there is. It’s not a positive claim—there isn’t a god—but it’s more of a negative claim that I lack evidence or I lack a belief in a god.

Most people would say that unless they can know something is true they’re going to assume it isn’t. The default position or the null hypothesis is that there isn’t a god, and if you’re going to claim that there is, then you need to demonstrate that. So most atheists are just in a neutral position. I don’t believe in unicorns, not because anyone has proven to me that there aren’t any unicorns. Most people don’t need evidence to prove there aren’t unicorns; my assumption is that there aren’t unless someone can produce one. I think a lot of atheists have that approach to God. It seems unreasonable to believe there is a god unless there’s evidence that there is. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

AToday: You said in an interview that there are more important questions than if god is real. What types of questions, are more important to you and why are they more important?

Bell: I think one of the things that led me to where I am now is a concern that the kind of belief in God that most of us have puts our focus and our emphasis off into another world—some other time, some other place. What I think are the most important questions are the questions that pertain to how we live now. This is where I actually find Jesus to be quite a compelling character because he—sort of against his cultural stream—focused on the immediate needs of his community, the people that he encountered.

To me the question of whether there’s a god or not sort of pales in comparison to questions like How should we live with one another? What are we going to do about the climate crisis? What are we going to do about income inequality and racism? If I had to pick a way to spend my life, I would rather spend my life working on those issues than endlessly going around the question of whether there’s a god or not. I would rather focus on those humanistic questions—relationships between people, our communities and nature.

AToday: What would you like Christians to understand about atheists?

Bell: I wish Christians would not immediately jump to the conclusion that atheists are immoral or bad people with no moral compass or are nihilists with no meaning and value in their lives, that all atheists are depressed with no way to make good ethical judgments. I think that’s a real fallacy. I think there are plenty of depressed Christians, and they’re are plenty of happy atheists. And vice versa.

AToday: What would you like atheists to know about Christians?

Bell: I wish atheists knew that not all Christians are biblical literalists. They’re not all homophobic and anti-women. It’s the fundamentalists that get a lot more media coverage in the U.S. than more liberal Christians.

I think we’ll all have better conversations if we can understand each other better, so a theist and an atheist can come to the conversation admitting the best in each other and talking about the actual differences that we have instead of these straw-man differences that we wish the other person would have so we could easily dismiss them.

I think atheists have to deal with the fact that there are a lot of really good Christians who do good in the world and who are happy, healthy productive members of society. That doesn’t mean there’s a god; it just means that some Christians have managed to believe in God and figure out how to live good lives in the world. And I think Christians have to realize that atheists are people who have very similar interests and values. That kind of parity in our understanding of each other would be a really good start.

AToday: You’ve said there are healthy and destructive ways to be a person of faith. How would you describe this healthy way.

Bell: I think anytime a person uses their moral, ethical, philosophical beliefs to channel the best human impulses to do good in the world and fight for the common good, those are things that are good expressions of Christianity that contribute to human thriving.

I think destructive ways of being a Christian are all the ways Christians can use ideology to discriminate against people who the Bible says are less or that they just think are less.

AToday: You’ve shared that a belief in the afterlife can be disempowering for action in this life. For those who believe in the “Great Controversy” theme with Jesus’ literal return, what would you want them to understand in order to be empowered rather than disempowered?

Bell: What I tried to tell my congregation is that one way of looking at eschatology is to say that we should be people who do now what we anticipate will be true one day. If we believe that there will be no more rich and poor, slave and free in some kind of future paradise, then as people who believe that, they should work to make that as true as possible now. That’s what I tried to encourage my folks about—we’re called to be people of action to produce the kinds of results we hope to one day see.

AToday: Carl Wilkens, the American Adventist who stayed in Rwanda during the genocide, told me that he believes God is active in the world through people (link to interview). I’m curious how you would react if your Christian friends said they believe God is still working through you in the world through your work with PATH or in other ways. Would that be offensive?

Bell: I think there’s a way for it to be offensive, where it comes off condescending like, “You’re still a theist even if you don’t realize it.” That’s a condescending way to say that person thinks they know more about what’s going on in my mind than I do. It’s a little offensive, but I don’t get offended easily. It’s more just wrong.

But I think that the way you’re intending it is fine with me. If you believe that there is a divine being—if we can use that word—that is superintending human affairs to some kind of good conclusion, then yeah there’s this kind of notion that anyone who is doing good in the world is doing it in participation with that process. Not all Christians would say that of course. That’s fine with me.

I think there are some forms of Christian theism that would see God as roughly equivalent to the concept of love. And so they wouldn’t see god being a being per se, a creature among other creatures, the most powerful being among all beings, but would see God as more of a force, sort of like gravity is a force that we can’t see or identify but we see the results of it. In that sense if you think love is equivalent to god—god is love, love is god—then anybody who is acting loving is acting in harmony with that, whatever you want to call it. That’s fine. We can all choose to call things different words.

The risk there is that people in the dominant society can tend to co-opt the minority position for their own. So there’s a way you can sort of say, “Let’s not focus on race. We’re all just human.” And if you’re a white person saying that, it’s very easy to sort of slip into, “Human, like me, of course. We’ll just call it human and we’re all just the same.” And a person of color might say, “Well, let’s unpack that a little more.” I think it’s also true that there is a line that you could cross in co-opting another’s viewpoint by saying, “They’re all worshiping the same thing even if they don’t know it.” But I also understand why someone would believe that if that’s truly their belief. Christians just have to understand how that can come across as sort of a totalizing kind of story.

AToday: During this year you started dating a Christian woman. What wisdom do you have for couples with different beliefs?

Bell: I think what works for us is that we’ve identified common values that in many ways transcend the question of whether we think there’s a god or not. I think if two people are romantically attracted to each other and they don’t have common values, that’s tough because one person wants to just spend money and one person wants to save money; one person wants to help the poor and one person wants to just keep it all for themselves.

Rebecca and I have more in common than not. The results of our belief systems are more in common even though on the question of whether there’s a god we differ. I’m a fan of her kind of Christianity. I was that kind of Christian myself, so I think it’s a good way of holding your faith. If you’re going to believe in something that is relatively unbelievable, then you should at least channel it for good in the world instead of harm. Rebecca is that kind of a Christian, and I’m totally supportive of that. And she supports my exploration, my doubts, my inability to make the puzzle pieces fit together. I think that’s the key—to find those common values that you can hold almost as religious values in a way. For me it’s from the perspective of humanism and for her from the perspective of Christianity. She’s working with survivors of human trafficking, and I’m working with the homeless. Unless you asked us what we thought about the existence of God, you wouldn’t necessarily know.

AToday: What can you tell me about the film Year Without God?

Bell: The film is being made by two guys—Ryan Moore and Tim Banks. They’ve been following me around as much as possible this year, as much as I would let them. I’m not a producer or a film maker. I’m the subject. I basically told them that they could do it.

It’s been fun. It’s going to be good. I think people will like it. I think people who think it’s going to be a hit piece against Christianity shouldn’t worry. It’s not going to be “Now Ryan gets revenge on Adventism.” It’s not going to be like that. It’s really a matter of documenting what it’s like to be in this in-between place where you’re struggling with doubts and questions. It’s one story of how someone navigated that. It should be out in the fall of this year.

AToday: Will there be a book?

Bell: I’m working on a book though it’s a slower process than I wish it was. There are no hard and fast commitments. We’ll see a book eventually, but I don’t know anything more than that right now.

AToday: What is the Life After God project?

Bell: It’s still in its conceptual stage, but my interest there is in being a companion in whatever way with people who are in a similar place and creating kind of a cultural space and a social space for people who are in a crisis of faith and trying to sort through what they believe and how it impacts their lives.

I don’t have an agenda to tear people’s faith away, but I do think that when people start having these deep questions and doubts about what they’ve been told, they don’t have a place to go or people with whom to have that conversation, so I’d like to hold that space for people in whatever way. And “in whatever way” is what I’m still trying to figure out.

I think it will include gatherings, online forums, even up to the point of doing some personal coaching. Usually coaching has to do with career coaching or life skills coaching, but this would be more like worldview coaching—what do you believe about the world and how do you go about asking those questions.

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Comments: 107

William Abbott

January 9, 2015 at 1:23 pm

Well, I think somebody was talking to Abraham. And Moses. And Jesus. You can certainly be an atheist Jew. But you can’t be a good Atheist Jew. You right about Atheist Adventist. That would be pointless. Good luck on your journey – I’m sure your way will be easy; the path is broad anyway, lots of company.

Ann

January 9, 2015 at 5:58 pm

Why can one not be a ‘good’ atheist Jew?

Marilyn

January 11, 2015 at 9:03 am

Atheist Jew is an oxymoron to say the least. The Jewish Nation is the chosen people of God; be they literal or spiritual Jews, while an atheist disallows the realism of God.

TMalatesta

March 8, 2015 at 9:06 am

“But you can’t be a good Atheist Jew” ??

I believe you are projecting your Christian ideal (or your concept of Christian ideals) onto a completely different form of faith. That is, unless of course, you yourself, are a Jew, in which case you are attempting to define the whole of Judaism by your own narrow conception of Judaism.

The highest attainment one can reach in Buddhism in this life is that of enlightenment. It is through this enlightenment that one transcends the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and become one with Nirvana, the ultimate state of “All That Is”. But there are forms of Buddhism wherein one must not strive for, or pay any mind to concepts of, enlightenment. Rather, that striving, contriving, and the desire from which they stem, are, in and of themselves, hinderances to any true enlightenment. As such, you simply live your life according to the Buddhist precepts of compassion, being in the here and now, and living a life of moderation. Period. By perfecting these, enlightenment will either be attained, or not. Either way, you will have lived “a good life”. In other words, one can be a ‘good’ Buddhist without striving for or caring about becoming enlightened.

America has a history. One that includes wrestling the land away from the Native American, who were considered “savagaes”, and of owning slaves, who were considered, at best, “three fifths” persons. We are also still wrestling with the demons of institutionalized racism, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. But America is also associated with certain principles, such as political and religious freedom and the equality of all humankind. America has its own history, and heritage, and culture. One can embrace being American without believing previous positions of Native Americans or Africans to be true. One can embrace being American without denying that previous (and current) generations of Americans (and American leadership) simply “had/have it wrong” on key issues. One can embrace being an American while standing completely against such things as prayer in public school, the Ten Commandments being displayed in public buildings, the inclusion of “In God we trust” on our money or “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance, or believing that America was formed as “a Christian nation”.

Of course, many, such as the 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, believe you certainly cannot be a “good” atheist American patriot. But that is a very narrow, prejudiced (and in my opinion ignorant and incorrect) view.

Being Jewish has meaning beyond being a member of a religion. It has a specific history, a specific heritage, and a specific culture, regardless of religion or nation. A history, heritage, and a culture that one can certainly embrace, without recourse to the Judaic God. And even without belief in God, one can still be “good”, and “Jewish”, and by extension, a good atheist Jew.

That’s all I’m saying.

John Vornholt

January 10, 2015 at 6:09 pm

If one exerts any effort to observe any of the sciences from Micro Biology to Astrophysics, one would have to come away with a profound sense of humility. Especially if one restricts himself to only physically measurable phenomena in the observable universe, you would have to conclude that there is very little we “know.” If one added the observations that are not readily measurable, we would only grow in appreciation of our ignorance.

We like to stroke ourselves pointing out we have advanced so remarkably over the course of recorded human history and at times we even suggest that on a predicted time line we will achieve some new block of anticipated understanding or knowledge.

I marvel at how we humans can achieve such a level of pride, thinking that we are about to package up “ultimate” knowledge and understanding. And then we betray our pride by claiming that if we don’t understand or can’t explain it, then it is insignificant or not worthy of consideration. I am reminded of how God entered the discussion at the end of the book of Job when the intellectuals were struggling to understand an explainable world view and philosophy for life. God posed what He might have considered a very elementary question. He simply asked Job where he (Job) was when the foundations of the earth were laid and if he was there when God told the sea where it had to stop at the shore. Job responded appropriately; “I put my hand over my mouth.” Job went on to say, “I’ve said too much already.” Job was suffering but, at that point he probably also felt his ignorance. At that point he also could have concluded that God was viciously tormenting him more with unanswerable questions or he could have concluded that this enormously wise and powerful God was talking directly to him with loving and sensitive understanding.

Still zealous to protect our pride, we “explain” our existential observation by simply saying that “it just happened.” And, since our mortality urges us to look at everything along a time line, we seem to satisfy ourselves with; “it just happened several million or billion years ago.” How can any logical mind disregard “intelligent design” in favor of random determinism? If one has a troubled soul over unanswered questions, it would appear that trust in a loving God would be much easier and more appealing than grasping at some supposed evidence that He does not exist. And, then continue to assume full personal responsibility to explain all things so that we can arrive at fully satisfying answers.

Since God is outside of “time,” He appears to be willing to give us all the time we need to examine the evidence and He apparently waits for us to “see and examine it all.” And, in the end He fully accepts our choices and still loves us, even if it is contrary to His wishes and our best good i.e. eternal life.

I have added Ryan Bell to my prayer list; I feel sorry for him, and for our church. He was obviously in a crisis and everyone ignored it. That is the problem that I have with the Adventist church in particular, but also with Christianity as a whole. Everyone feels that they “know” the truth, but often fail to see the truths that are taking place in the congregation. As a new member (less than 2 years) I can see the schisms in my congregation; others, who have been there for years, can’t. They say, “we are a friendly church,” but nothing can be further from the truth. While I am there the atmosphere is warm and welcoming, but during the week – nothing. No calls, no contact, it is as thought the people in the church drop of the radar. Because of this I started noting who was absent, and would call to make sure everything was okay. Attendance picked up. Just that little action, calling, made people feel special. We have a member who never missed church, but hasn’t been there. I called, he said he is okay; still was absent, but when I called the number was disconnected. So I went by, but I am a woman so I knocked and spoke with him, but didn’t go in for prayer or anything. I let the elder know. He still hasn’t returned to church and when I asked about their visit; they haven’t had time yet. As people who have been in the church all their life, most Adventists do not realize that the world is a friendly place. There is no way I could have disappeared from my favorite bar and no one call to see what was up. Oh, you don’t have money…don’t worry, I’ll buy your drinks. This isn’t happening in our churches.

Cheryl Andersen

January 13, 2015 at 10:49 am

It has been our personal experience that the Adventist church is one of the coldest, least welcoming churches in Christianity. I get more support and help from my Catholic and Evangelical contacts. What do you suggest we do about this?

Sigi Keller

January 17, 2015 at 12:00 am

Hi Cheryl, in answer to your question ‘what do we do about this?’. One essential ingredient of a warm church is ‘small groups’. Ideally the whole congregation should belong to small groups. The small group meets once a week, apart from Sabbath to 1.Share personal problems 2.Share the spiritual journey 3.Share feelings with each other. Of course there is prayer and some kind of Bible reading etc. also. This way faith becomes more real and the group members come closer to God and to each other. Outreach then follows. Only meeting once a week for church service is not enough to sustain one’s spiritual journey and to have a healthy church.

Shane

February 8, 2015 at 2:54 pm

Give the warmth you desire to receive.

I often find we expect churches to make up for the shortfall we see in our own lives. I see so many people come into a church expecting the church to give them something, it could be fellowship, warm, acceptance or love and yet they fail to realise they are the church—each of us who are in church “searching” for these elements need to learn to “give” them. If you want a church that loves, love it’s members, if you want one that is warm, be warm to it’s members. Give first!

Christ wanted a church that would represent His love for the world and His church crucified Him, yet he still lived for them knowing full well how they would treat Him and from that life “The Way”, later known as Christians due to their desire to follow Jesus’ example, was born. If your after a cold church try the one Christ died for.

If we give love, warmth and acceptance and expect nothing back in return it is amazing how quickly you find yourself in a loving warm church.

Julie

November 29, 2015 at 5:00 pm

I am sad to say that I must agree regarding the church. Struggling through trials and no one reaching out to me from my home church.

If heaven had Newspapers I guess the universe would have read:’prominent angel resigns and takes a third of angels with him.’ The background would have been of course that he was counselled many times but chose to go his own way. While God and the loyal angels were no doubt very sorry, they had to accede to his choice. So while we are sorry for Bell, we must accede to his choice. While satan has no hope of ever returning to holiness, we trust that that will not be the same for bro. Bell. We trust that he will see the folly of his actions and take remedial actions. There is a much more important concern that I have, and this is, why is A Review giving prominence to this man’s actions? What are the motives if any? I see only no good coming out of this interview. How can we give exposure by way of this interview to such actions that RB subscribes to? It is fashionable to behaviour like RB. Certainly the Bible discourages this behaviour, why advertise it? There is wisdom in many things, but for me there is none in this exposure.

Ann

January 9, 2015 at 6:00 pm

Pastor Henderson, is this how you will respond when members leave your flock? Treat them as outcasts? This is, fundamentally, one of the most serious problems with the Adventist church today. Its leadership, in broad terms, has absolutely no idea how to ‘make room’ for people from other faiths and/or with questions and ideas. Continue this path, and you will be a lonely soul.

Richard Lawson

January 9, 2015 at 6:46 pm

Pastor Handerson: The Pharisees criticized Jesus for drawing attention to the suffering of people by healing them and forgiving their sins when it was their sins that put them in those unfortunate positions in the first place. I see no good coming out of a church that refuses love and compassion for anyone. You sound like the pastor that told me (in reference to another member’s difficulties) that no one experiences that much trouble without bringing most of it on themselves.

Sigi Keller

January 19, 2015 at 1:29 pm

Amen Pastor Ron. We all have been given the freedom of choice by the Creator of who we want to worship. Bro Bell has made his choice, so leave him to it. As for all his dribble taking up space in this publication, I wonder what good it is supposed to do. What do the editors of ‘Adventist today’ mean to achieve by publishing such material?

Edward

March 8, 2015 at 4:51 am

“The background would have been of course that he was counselled many times but chose to go his own way. ”

Nonsense. We don’t choose our beliefs. Beliefs are the result of being convinced that a certain proposition is true or not being convinced. You don’t get to turn this around on Ryan and blame him for choosing atheism.

Leo H

January 9, 2015 at 1:30 pm

Ultimately it boils down to standards out, feelings in. If everyone thought life that we’d have a few reasonable people and many who would take all they could get. I still don’t think Ryan thought this through very well. In his blog he mentioned that after 12 months he found no evidence that God existed. That’s a great leap of logic. After 12 months of shunning all things Christian, spending time with atheists and atheist literature and basically not looking for evidence for God, to come out and say you haven’t found the evidence is highly illogical. Spending a year avoiding the evidence and then coming out saying he hasn’t found any makes me think it was all preplanned as a publicity exercise.

And to think he gets all this free publicity now courtesy of liberal Adventist websites.

Richard Lawson

January 9, 2015 at 9:55 pm

Leo, That’s easy to say when it your standards vs another’s feelings. I understand the caution against choices based on feelings but choosing standards without feelings has created a cold, hard, and indifferent church. I will choose a person who shows he has feelings over a person who has strict standards any day.

Alan Richardson

January 10, 2015 at 4:13 am

Why would a person would turn his back on his Creator and Redeemer?What a shame! I hope the notoriety and publicly can replace the joy of the abiding presence of God in the life of this subject. What ever happened to the “Faith of a child” concept?

Bell’s form of right wing Adventisism is very much like the legalistic atheistic Jews. He’ll probably feel right at home with them because their whole religion is based on the rules and regulations and not on a relationship with Christ. It’s hard to think that someone can be a minister and still not know Jesus personally but I’m betting that’s the case. That’s why Christ says I never knew you, because he never did. I hope our dear friend finds Jesus some day before he has to face him in the sky because it would be a tragedy to gain the whole world and lose one’s soul.

KetaV.

January 9, 2015 at 3:23 pm

I’m so sorry for those who choose their own intellectualism, minuscule by comparison to God, in the seduction of satan to his own ways. [8″For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9″For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts…Isaiah 55:8] Indeed, there could never have been a true relationship/experience with/of God. The conclusion “there is no God…”I think”…leaves an escape clause, even in the so-called boldest of declarations…”Just in case”!

I hate to tell you, but that escape clause isn’t/won’t be enough!

I pray the seduction to secularism, and the implied”permission” to leave the narrow way, and thus bless the “journey” on a pathway of destruction, doesn’t lead others who may be on the cusp into a path of folly. Shepherds are held to a higher standard,and that is a lot to have to answer for. I agree, this should not be given life with journalistic “light”, and free advertisement. I could not even finish reading it. It is full of intellectual self-aggrandizement, in this so-called “journey”. The lack of a true calling, but rather seeing ministry as a “job”, which didn’t bring the anticipated rewards, unfortunately, seems to be the culprit here. I am a scientist, and yet the more I learn of “science”, the more I KNOW there IS “God”.

I am praying for you brother, that you truly find connection with him…for you are truly loosing out, if you think that this earthly “journey”is all there is. Don’t take others with you on this dangerous path. “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Jer. 29:13 What if you had spent this year seeking God, my friend? God Bless you to find your way home…

Ann

January 9, 2015 at 6:04 pm

Your judgmental attitude is what will lose you your relationship with Christ. And what, may I ask, is ‘legalistic aetheist Jewish religion?’ It has been made clear that atheist Jews continue to cleave to their communities because of the moral and ethical examples, as well as the love and acceptance they are shown, DESPITE, their differing opinions. I can assure you that the same example is not set by the Adventist church, and your arguments are case in point. Shame on you.

Pastor Robert Hoyt

January 9, 2015 at 1:43 pm

Broad is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way to eternal life and few there be that find it. There is still time brothe, don’t lose it now.

Kevin Figueroa

January 9, 2015 at 2:16 pm

I am no at all surprised in brother Bell decision but what I am surprised are the questions asked to him. They do not appear in any way to be beneficial for no side.

Teddy Shupe

January 9, 2015 at 2:28 pm

Thank you, Ryan, for being willing to share from your heart. Please forgive the arrogance of those who would dare criticize a fellow human being’s honest attempt to understand their life journey. The Jesus I know and read about in scripture would never do so.

Ian

January 9, 2015 at 3:08 pm

“The Jesus I know and read about in scripture would never do so” Really? Are they arrogant/ or are you the one who has displayed arrogance against those who “those who would dare criticize a fellow human being’s honest attempt to understand their life journey”. Why can’t they be critical of his journey? Ryan was critical of God and Adventism, is he arrogant? As for the “The Jesus” you “know and read about in scripture” are you sure the Bible Jesus would never do so? You mean the same Jesus, who ran the leaders out twice, for running the Church in a way that was contrary to the word of God? The same Jesus who called Herod a fox? or Peter a Devil? or the Jews children of the Devil? You seem enamored with your santaclausified version of Jesus, that rejects any notion that shows Jesus as loving yet strict, humble, yet bold and aggressive, gentle yet so masculine that he seldom backed down from an argument. Is that the same Jesus, Teddy? Is it at all possible that the fog of western secularism has obscured the Bible version of Jesus from you?

Alan Richardson

January 10, 2015 at 4:23 am

Hey Teddy, Jesus did criticize. Remember his comment about the “Whited Sepulcher”?

While we should feel sorry for RB for his actions, and while we pray that he will return to his God, we kindly and strongly accept his position to reject his God, God grants him that choice. And yes, God is saddened by it, but He has to let him go at his request. Likewise we pray for RB that he will turn around before it’s too late. Remember, folks, when God advertised satan’s defection it was not a free for all question and answer situation. The advert that we humans know about is the one given to our original parents, Adam and Eve. This advertisement was a warning to our parents to be aware of the cunning of the evil one. Why should A Review ever give an advertisement to RB in such a positive light? It is more destructive to humanity than good. But I guess like Ryan Bell’s choice to separate from God, the A. Review has the same choice to strengthen the brethren by showing the harm in accepting false ideas, or it has the choice of glamorizing the episode, thus endangering the life of many individuals who are weak in the Lord.

Edward

March 8, 2015 at 4:56 am

He didn’t choose to reject god. Beliefs are not a result of choice. They are a result of being convinced of a particular proposition. You can’t put the blame on Ryan for choosing to reject god when the reality is that he simply is not convinced that a god actually exists. Theism has failed miserably in meeting its burden of proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KayBys8gaJY

Interested Friend

January 9, 2015 at 3:17 pm

In my view both Spectrum and AToday have given this former Pastor much more publicity than is wise.

Will AToday now interview someone who attended GYC, for example, and allow that person to give a positive view of Bible Adventism? Maranatha

Chris Ebenezer

January 9, 2015 at 3:39 pm

You feel like turning away from God when you see all these discouraging things happening in the world, however, you keep telling yourself that God allows these things to happen because he did not create us like robots. He gave us the choice to choose right but our first parents chose wrong and many who came after them chose wrong and we continue to choose wrong. Every time we choose wrong we face the consequences.

Sad but true. The devil is behind it all!!!!!

The day is coming when all of this will be done soon.

Jiggs Gallagher

January 9, 2015 at 3:39 pm

Ryan– You’re so right about not knowing what will catch fire in media–I’m a lifelong PR guy, & it always surprises me!

Wayne Jones

January 9, 2015 at 3:48 pm

Ryan, I thought your comments were very complete and the questions well thought out. I sympathize with you on all but your divorce.

How truly sad! As we can see in the comments above, the majority are sad with me. As a long-time pastor I have seen this sort of thing happen, and the ultimate outcome is most often tragic. I can only hope that his one-year journey will end by his recognizing that without the Lord Jesus Christ is empty and hopeless. Humanistic philosophy is no match for the truth of the Bible. Ryan, I will lift you up in prayer! Jim

butler

January 9, 2015 at 5:24 pm

During our academy years, on a regular basis, one of the teachers would take 5 of us birding sabbath morning. Always, we would finish with an earnest prayer circle pleading for holiness of character. At about age 50, the teacher became an atheist. One who became a pastor is also now an atheist. My best friend at the time whose spiritually seemed unquestionable is now also an atheist. I left the church many years ago but have never been able to shake my belief in the existence of Jesus. Only one remains an staunch Adventist. The mystery of how our minds ‘drive’ us to what we become is confounding. As far as the validity of ‘advertising’ Ryan Bell’s experience, try reading the OT for a few hours at a time.

RT1C

January 9, 2015 at 5:27 pm

I have mixed reactions to this story.

On the one hand, this comes across as the reflections of a self-centered, attention-seeking narcissist who talks about peace and justice but rejects rules/law in favor of feelings and “stories”. Like his feeling that he doesn’t love his wife anymore and was willing to sacrifice his kids’ happiness for his self-fulfillment, and the story of how in his self-induced lonely, godless state he met this wonderful girlfriend who is so supportive of him and his doubts even though she is a practicing Christian. (I’m referring to other stories about Ryan Bell’s experience posted elsewhere online). How sweet!

I’m suspicious that many of the things he doesn’t miss about Adventism were things he wasn’t practicing anyway. Even as an atheist I’d value the healthy lifestyle I learned as an Adventist. But if I wasn’t following that lifestyle in the first place, I suppose I wouldn’t miss it.

The U.S. Constitution is an objective “outside” standard that the president of the U.S. (for example) swears to uphold. If they didn’t, the public should be upset. The current president’s tendency to do what he pleases regardless of the constitution is highly problematic. Bell likely applauds that, since he prefers to take into account individual stories (I suppose stories such as that of Michael Brown and the storyline of Black oppression as justification for law-breaking without police responding with force). But imagine where it could lead? Are we a nation of laws or are we not? If we abandon (or “reinterpret”) laws and instead rely on stories and individual experiences, would that improve justice and peace? I think not!

Bell’s denial of publicity-seeking contradicts his public activism and publications prior to this period, the many public presentations he has made during this year without God, and the movie and book and promotion thereof (including this interview) afterwards. He got a lot of press on Spectrum in the past because he got a lot of press elsewhere. This isn’t his first dance.

On the other hand, I do feel empathy for his doubts and questions and the struggle he has gone through the past few years. I wonder if these might be a reaction to binary fundamentalist views from earlier in his life? In many parts of our denomination there isn’t a safe space for those with doubts and questions. Of course, this is true in many other organizations as well, religious and other-wise. But the increasing polarization of society—and the church—doesn’t make it any easier for people with questions to find answers or to transition comfortably between perspectives. My suspicion is that Bell experienced a mid-life crisis and instead of holding the course until he came out the other side of the storm, abandoned ship and will regret it in future years when he looks back on the family and life that he lost.

RT1C

January 9, 2015 at 5:28 pm

(continued)

Also, I heartily concur with Bell’s assessment that the impulse of Adventism is the pursuit of present truth. I wish we would take that approach on questions of science and origins, for example, instead of sticking to received traditional interpretations. Forcing people to make choices between rational thinking and belief in God is unnecessary and not helpful.

Finally, I agree with Bell that God is big enough to handle our questions and doubts, and I suspect is more gracious towards us than any of us imagine. To arrive at an agnostic position through honest soul-searching is more truthful than the arrive at “faith” through the convenience of unthinking tradition. Truthful in the micro rather than macro sense, that is. I suspect God has remarkable tolerance for those who get the micro right but misstep on the macro. I realize many would disagree with that.

I do wonder what someone in Bell’s shoes would consider sufficient evidence that God exists. I.e., assume the null hypothesis; how would you prove it is false? If you set up a logical impossibility, then you’ll never prove it. Is there any evidence at all that Bell would accept? (If, for example, we teach that unicorns are never seen, rarely intervene detectably in the physical realm, and respect human freedom—what might we accept as sufficient evidence to push us from an agnostic aunicornist to an agnostic unicornist or even to a unicornist believer? If you dreamed of a unicorn speaking to you, that would not be conclusive evidence for many of us, even if there was a “burning in the bosom” from a Mormon unicorn. What if there was an audible voice while you were awake? What if a friend shared a story of a unicorn telling him something in advance that came to pass? We can discount just about any evidence if we want to, rationalizing it in some way. But if there is no evidence we would accept, then our question is meaningless. In that case, we are less than agnostic: we have our fingers in our ears and eyes shut tight without a plan for how to listen and see. I submit that we have to figure out how to properly phrase the questions so that the null hypothesis can be tested. A starting place for Bell might be to ask what evidence he considers sufficient that his wife doesn’t love him or that his girlfriend does. Then, could the same evidentiary standard be applied to God?).

I don’t know Bell personally so haven’t an informed opinion other than the stories I’ve read and things he has written. While my impressions from those sources are more negative than positive, I wish him well.

Jack Hoehn

January 25, 2015 at 10:17 pm

RT1C has asked a lot of questions I have had. I do thank AToday for asking Ryan questions and giving us his answers. But I have lived long enough that I have learned that self deception about our motives and justification of our actions is very very easy, and sometimes the wounds of a friend from outside looking on can be therapeutic. Time and the investigative judgment will tell better than we can know now. This is not a threat to Ryan who need not be concerned about what to him is not real. But it should help us who believe in Christ and his blessed judgment process, to continue to put out arms of love and kindly truths to him, as Ryan has been trying to do to us.

Richard Lawson

January 9, 2015 at 5:51 pm

I sympathize with Ryan Bell’s situation and process, although not his conclusions, if he has actually reached a conclusion in his process. This type of shocking headline always gets the attention of Adventist readers. The question, “How can any Adventist, especially a seminary trained pastor, become so deluded?” And the canned answer is always that he exposed himself to too much liberal thinking and philosophy. I do not know the specifics of Pastor Bell’s journey. But what about the Adventism that contributed to his current thought process. None of this happened in a vacuum. Adventism is rampant with Phariseeism, judging and criticizing anyone who has the courage to question or who has the individuality to behave differently. I could have gone the way of Pastor Bell if I had not continually reminded myself of God’s direct intervention in my life, past and present, regardless of what others in the church are thinking or saying. But it can be very discouraging when our persecuters are apparently being blessed more than we are. It is tempting to wonder whether God loves them more, or maybe there is no God and everything that happens is merely luck and coincidence. An Adventist church that can think of nothing more than criticism when a former member and leader has questions is not a church that is aligned with the God I know. They are more like the Pharisee who prays thankfully that they are not in the same deplorable condition. Even one’s closest church friends suddenly are not available. And what does the outcast person do with a friend that wants to know God better? He certainly cannot bring them to the Adventist church. I have tried with embarrassing results. Adventists that do not know God are dying for lack of love. And Pastor Bell apparently has allowed the condition of the church to cause him to wonder whether it is God that does not exist. I pray that he will find that it is God that is alive after all.

South African Calvinist Christian philosopher said in his two volume book Oorsprong en Rigting [Origin and Direction] to the effect that the way you live [your ontology and lifestyle] determines the way you think [your epistemology] and your thinking determines the barriers and limits and gutters you permit for the way you will do things [your methodology or modus oprandi] and your methodology will determine the final product [deontology = a sermon, an interview, a book, an article, a presentation, a lecture, ‘table talks’. Solomon said the same in Proverbs 2:10~13 “for wisdom [from God] will enter your heart [surrendered and devoted EQ] and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul [SQ] discretion will guard you [sanctified IQ] understanding will watch over you to deliver you from the way of evil from the man who speaks perverse things from those who leave the path of uprightness. . . (Koot van Wyk DLitt et Phil; Thd; Visiting Professor at Department of Liberal Education, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer at Avondale College Australia). Thank God for the Missionary Bell couple Robert Bell and there three sons from Helderberg College that gave us the epitomy of proper Christian Adventists to balance the above negative template.

Ann

January 9, 2015 at 6:06 pm

The sorrow with which I read the comments herein pierce my heart and soul as if they were directed at me. When will this church learn to practice Christ’s love and acceptance instead of pettiness, hatred, and fear? That day, the church will reap the blessings it has been promised. Not until, though.

Interested Friend

January 9, 2015 at 7:04 pm

“When will this church learn to practice Christ’s love and acceptance instead of pettiness, hatred, and fear?”

In my many years of experience with the SDA church I find that characterization as far off the mark. Sounds more like bitterness for some reason. Maranatha

Richard Lawson

January 9, 2015 at 10:01 pm

Ann: I am beginning to think the answer is “never”. I was raised to believe that the SDA church goes through to the kingdom, but I have come to realize that does not mean the existing leadership and organization. As Israel in the wilderness did not go through to the promised land, including Moses and Aaron, perhaps the remnant of Rev. 14 is a remnant of the Adventists, that portion of the church that achieves perfection (144,000) in a full understanding and practice of the love shown by God through Jesus’ life on earth.

Dishon

January 10, 2015 at 3:50 am

Ann I am wondering what you mean by practicing Christ love and acceptance. Christ spent time with sinners to guide them to a relationship with God not just to show them that they are loved. From his pronouncement to the woman caught in sin ( go and sin no more) and from his hates rebuke of the leaders of the church we realize that he had a zero tolerance for sin, although he loved the sinner he clearly rebuked sin openly to the sinners face. The church shouldn’t be saying “sin as long as you like and we will be there to support you” that isn’t christlikeness. instead we should be calling sin as sin while showing love to the sinner. And I don’t believe that the comments are going contrary to this principle. Though I sympatize with brother bell and know the feeling of questioning Gods existance, what gounds me is my personal experience. I pray that he too will remember his personal experiences and return to the Lord before it is too late. “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is tha man that trusteth in him.” One must taste and see for themselves. Blessings

I am baffled by the question in the context of Ryan Bell. The conference allowed him to very publicly preach and teach things that were contrary to Adventist understanding. That was Christ’s love.

I would ask where Ryan’s integrity was in continuing to accept a paycheck from a church who’s beliefs he no longer supported. I would like to ask where Ryan’s love was when he was castigating those who did not believe what he believed.

My biggest problem with Ryan is that on one hand he protests the lack of tolerance by Christians and at the same time is intolerant of Christians. Brutally illustrated by his lumping all Southern Baptists with the Westboro Baptist Church.

In the grip of grace

Steve Moran

Timothy Davis

January 9, 2015 at 6:22 pm

The great and mighty ship FAITH has arrived at the scene of a terrible tragedy. Life buoys are feverishly thrown from her by her loyal crew to the many survivors who helplessly try to thrash in the stormy sea. Many are pulled aboard and are crying in gratitude for the saving line that was tossed ( the Gospel Line). One bewildered crew member jumps ship and is floating, nearly lost, in the stormy foam. A life line is thrown, shouts are called, will he go under? There are thousands and ten thousands of souls like myself bro. RB who can tell you about the wonderful God who has saved them from a miry end. Would you like to hear? If you think there is no God you are shutting your ears and blinding your eyes to His reality, RB just put down your pride and call out to God. We need you back on board brother, The great ship FAITH has a tremendous job to do. You could be winning souls. Many around Hollywood are desperate, They need the Savior. Come on brother, grab the line! Tim

Ryan needs to do what he needs to do and I don’t begrudge him that. However there are some things I find frustrating. Perhaps this one quote from the interview, more than any other demonstrates it:

“There are a lot of gods that it would not be a good thing if they were true—the Southern Baptist God or the Westboro Baptist Church God. I want nothing to do with that god. In fact I hope that god doesn’t exist.”

1. To equate Southern Baptists with the less than a dozen who call themselves the Westboro Baptist Church is an insult to Southern Baptists.

2. It would then seem that he should also include Seventh day Adventists in that list.

3. Some have praised his honesty and his willingness to ask questions and seek answers. It seems pretty clear that perhaps with the exception of the Sabbath he had rejected what Adventists believe. No problem with that except it was not Ryan who quit because he didn’t believe, it was the conference that pulled the plug. And for all of that Ryan was felt angry and betrayed by the conference.

I would argue that if Ryan had been a serious honest seeker of truth he would have left Adventism years ago.

4. There are good people who see things radically different than Ryan (Like Adventists, Southern Baptists and Conservatives). Mostly people who are just trying to do the best they can. What I find so hypocritical is that Ryan complains about the intolerance of the right in politics and religion while at the same time having complete intolerance for those who see things differently than he does.

Just as a for instance he is passionate about immigrant rights but has seemly little or no concern about the how illegal immigrants are displacing jobs for citizens. Not particularly wanting to argue this issue except to say that it is complex with no easy answers.

While it is clear that Ryan is a reader and a listener it seems as if he is only a listener and reader of stuff he agrees with or at least fits in a rather narrow mindset.

I did not know Ryan or know of Ryan during his Weimar years but I suspect that he was equally as disdainful about the liberals then, as he is about conservatives today.

5. While I take Ryan at his word that he did not expect his year without God to go as viral as it did. I do believe he was hoping for lots of interest so that he could write a book about his experience.

If you look at his Hollywood Church history it is clear he relished being on the public stage. You will find dozens to hundreds of quotes and video stories, so to claim that he was just doing this little thing . . . is a bit hard to swallow.

Putting icing on that cake is that he did not have to make the dozens of video appearances and participate in a like number of print interviews.

We will know for sure when and if his book comes out.

I wish him well, I just more real honesty.

In the grip of grace

Steve Moran

Phillip Hullquist

March 8, 2015 at 7:16 am

Perhaps Mr. Bell was singling out the Southern Baptists for different beliefs such as their doctrine of an eternally burning hell. I wouldn’t want to believe in that God either.

When Ryan made his announcement of “trying on atheism,” I thought that no one who has a living relationship with Jesus (the definition of what it means to be a Christian” can “try on atheism.” In fact it’s not something you can “try on.” You may have doubts, but to “try on atheism” is to reject God at a core level. I’ve had my own doubts of God’s existence – but I examined those doubts as a teen, not in a mid-life crisis.

As a young teen I faced my doubts, remembered the times that I had experienced God in my life – or so I thought – and recognized that many things *could* have been coincidental. I knew I had a choice to make – to believe and live accordingly or to disbelieve and live accordingly. I chose the former and have had many occasions to test my personal “God hypothesis.” I remember the moment I made that choice as clearly as if it had been this morning, and I can now say from experience that I *know* that God exists because I talk with Him regularly, and He acts in my life and in the lives of those I pray for – sometimes dramatically, but that is another story.

Faith is not just accepting someone else’s beliefs. It is not a matter of accepting a faith tradition, going to seminary, graduating and taking a job as a pastor. All that can be done without a particle of faith.

Faith means trusting God enough to surrender one’s entire life to Him and to take the risks that obedience entails. Risk of failure and loss. Risk of ridicule. One cannot “try out faith.” It’s an all-or-nothing deal. But for those who choose the faith journey, the rewards far outweigh the risks – especially when it becomes evident that it is in the “risky” choices that God reveals Himself. That’s what the three Hebrew young men found out in the furnace that was heated to such an intensity that the soldiers ordered to throw them into it died in the fulfillment of the order. But the three men met Jesus in the furnace. So I have met Jesus more than once – in the furnace of difficulty.

I pity Ryan Bell because he has rejected a God he never knew, somewhat like Richard Dawkins. As irascible as the latter is, I rather like him and think we could have a great conversation if we ever met. He’s been honest enough to admit that if the real picture of God (as I have experienced Him) were true, that would be a God worth following. But the moment passed, and he continues to reject a god of his own making, built on the foundation of false gods in his environment – a “god delusion.”

I believe that God might yet be able to reach Richard Dawkins. And thus I believe that God still pursues Ryan, and if he is willing to repent, God will still use him in a great way.

I can only hope and pray that Ryan is not so full of pride and self-sufficiency that the voice of the Spirit is stilled in His life.

Lara

June 26, 2015 at 10:57 am

If memory serves, he did know God. But whatever the relationship, it was between Ryan and God and is not something anyone else can address.

Keith Farnsworth

January 9, 2015 at 7:05 pm

Though I don’t agree with Bell’s conclusions, I sympathize with him in dealing with the issues he has shared. I am now a retired Adventist minister/hospital chaplain. But at one point I left “the ministry” because I could not honestly remain there while dealing with the issues which haunted me. That lasted 3 and 1/2 years. I did not leave the church, nor discontinue church fellowship, and I am grateful that my friends and colleagues were patient, whether understanding or not. And it hurts to read some of the comments made on this site that fail to make allowance for someone’s need to be honest with himself and others in order to maintain his integrity. And yes, I do hope that Bell’s journey will conclude with a recognition of God’s existence and sovereignty, that is defined by God and not someone else. Work out your own salvation with wholesome fear and trembling, Dear Friend.

Artiewhitefox

January 9, 2015 at 8:31 pm

The body itself is in sin. We are so close to it many don’t see it.Fleshy and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God for a reason. Has this verse ever been used in any sermon? Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV). ..Romans 13:10: Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Homosexuality is not a sin. People thinking it is breaks this law. God wants the heart to be pure. An impure heart will issue forth defiled, naughty, abominable words with a perverted tongue. They curse rather than bless.

Nancy Chadwick

January 9, 2015 at 10:17 pm

Job’s friends were so sure they knew who God really was. Job was sure. But his experience didn’t validate the reality they were so sure about. Job wouldn’t back down no matter what. In that world where there was only one Diety, the author of good and evil, Job’s insistence on being true to his own experience was validated by God. “My servant Job spoke the truth about Me.” I believe that our God wants us to honest with ourselves and others. Perhaps Ryan’s determination to be honest with his own experience and that of others he has met is the beginning of his journey into the “present truth” of who God really is. Our God is big enough to let us wrestle with Him. Actually I think He much prefers that for His Laodician church. God asked Peter in a dream to eat and kill unclean animals to illustrate “present truth” to the Jewish Christians, thereby revealing some new and shocking truth about God to the world. It is my prayer that Ryan’s journey and faithfulness to being a “Joban Preacher” will be used by our Creator God for something very wonderful.

Hansen

January 9, 2015 at 10:23 pm

Keith, I can absolutely understand why a hospital chaplain would become disillusioned. If there is one area where God seems to be asleep,it’s the area of divine healing. I wonder how many seemingly useless prayers I could offer in behalf of the sick before I became disillusioned.

Ryan Bell is a train wreck. The guy should be ignored. It was in bad taste for Atoday to give him an inch of column space.

Keith Farnsworth

January 16, 2015 at 6:46 am

Hansen, I don’t know that it was disillusionment as much as frustration. But, that may not matter. When that “wandering in the wilderness” period ended, I had a stronger faith in God despite not having all my questions answered. And the same goes for the church. I still have issues there, but realize that neither I nor the the church is perfect. And I have not seen another church body that I would rather be part of. In this life we will always be questioning. But, that need not be a reason to let go and lose the opportunity to be used by God.

I know that a large number of SDAs will be very disapointed in the course taken by Brother Bell, and by some of his pronouncements; but many of us adventists, if we are honnest, would admit that members who are critical of the questionable religious and unbiblical practices of the church are not respected or even welcome in the church fellowship, especially by the leaders. Intollerance, pharisism and narrowmindedness in the church make havoc of honest inquiry and earnest study of the bible. The earnest search for truth which characterized the devotion of early Adventists is totally gone out of the church, and the fastest road out of the church is the one which questions or disagrees with any of the fundamental beliefs of the church. To be a christian is to follow the example of Jesus, who came to call sinners to repentance. If we continue to be legalistic and judgemental we will continue to make atheists and agnostics of many inquiring members. N Moore

What accounts for Ryan accounted for Friedrich Schleiermacher when filled with the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ of Ludwig Feuerbach he wrote hesitantly to his father after been expelled from the Moravian Seminary: “I cannot believe that He, Who called Himself the Son of Man, was the true eternal God; I cannot believe that His death was a vicarious atonement…(shortened)”. Pastor Gottlieb Schleiermacher wrote to his son: “Oh, thou insensuate son! Who has deluded thee, that thoh no longer obeyest the truth, thou, before whose eyes Christ was pictured, and who now crucifiest Him …And if the departed watch over us, oh! What a cruel disturber of the tranquility of ylur blessed mother have you become….Alas! Into what a state of delusion has the wickedness of your heart plunged you! …And now, O son, who I press with tears to my sorrowful heart! With heartrending grief I discarded thee, for discard thee I must, as thou no longer worship the God of thy fathers”. Schleiermacher the Skeptic Rationalist was more honest than our modern mirror, he wrote to his father in admission of his wretchedness: “Oh!Could you picture yourself the distressing, miserable condition of your son!.” We do not need to empathize with Schleiermacher since his roommate wrote about him “Schleiermacher a born critic of anything having to do with the Bible . . .is writing a work on religion” (Schlegel’s letter to Novalls).Source: Unpublished essays on Schleiermacher. Koot van Wyk DLitt et Phil; ThD.

Guess

January 10, 2015 at 5:01 pm

The SDA church would do a lot better if almost all pastors would resign. They are not properly trained to preach therefore they muddy and corrupt the bible , if not neglect to share it from the pulpit. The approach of most is pathetic.

I suppose you know what all the pastors are preaching and have the best solution for all of them. Grow up!

David Keyes

January 10, 2015 at 5:47 pm

Open note to Ryan, Sorry to hear what has happened in your life. As I remember you back in Cleveland, you were a bright and energetic person. I don’t know what all has happened in your life to make you turn so drastically about, but I hope you can look back over your shoulder and see how good things really are in your Father’s house… Consider, why do Adventist Today and Spectrum give so much exposure to your mistakes? Your mistakes are no more egregious than mine or any other conservative’s or liberal’s mistakes. We are all equally sinful in the sight of God. My bet is that you represent a “viewpoint” that resonates with their own real desires. Could that be true of the following you have developed as well? Is that all you want out of life, to be the validation of a popular opinion? If you will, you can do so much better than that! Praying for you! (to a God that I KNOW hears)

John Vornholt

January 10, 2015 at 6:10 pm

So, keep up on your honest search for the truth, Ryan. I am confident that God will end up looking good and be the most attractive choice. My guess would be that a scrutinizing examination of God would show Him to be trustworthy to be loved and believed as the source of all knowledge and understanding. We might have to be willing to be patient with God as He leads our paltry intellect “into all truth.”

Timothy Davis

January 10, 2015 at 9:22 pm

Ryan, Do you read these responses? If so, then I would like to challenge you. You took a year off, didn’t study the Word of God, didn’t pray, Didn’t fellowship with committed believers in Christ, didn’t attend church (at least not for the sake of worship), and didn’t live a life which honored the Creator. And look where you ended up. A wreck. So now try this challenge. Read a section of the Bible every day (maybe start with the book of John), say a prayer every day, (maybe for your family, your parents, your children, your friends, our country, whatever you think best), kneel down in private every day and thank God for all the blessings you enjoy. And talk with a faithful follower of Christ every day. Seek the Lord in sincerely and He promises that you will find him. I know that you will not be the same man you are now. You will realize the greatness and goodness of a wonderful Savior and long to serve Him and share Him with a lost world. Tim

“A wreck.” On what basis did you determine I’m a wreck. I’ve actually never had more peace and health than I have now.

Elaine Nelson

March 7, 2015 at 9:01 pm

It’s a wonder that the Adventist rumor mill doesn’t have you incarcerated for some heinous crime by now. It’s a relief to be free, isn’t it?

Nathan James

March 7, 2015 at 10:25 pm

The reason Ryan (and other atheists like myself) leave the church and stay left is because we find the fruits of the spirit–love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance–more often in people who are NOT christian than those who are. If people really are new creations in Christ, why do so few act like it?

Any member of our denomination living in the United States in the late nineteenth century has heard the term “proof texts”. I never tried to “prove” doctrine to anyone who attended attended SdA schools and was taught HOW to do that. Let’s suppose a person decides to use that method and call it “evangelism” and later decides he can’t prove the existence of the God he has been describing. What other choice would he have but to admit it? It’s a wonder more people don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!

lance hodges

January 11, 2015 at 8:44 am

None of us should dig a hole for ourselves on any subject that we can’t crawl out of. Blessings to all.

Carly McGinn

January 11, 2015 at 8:58 am

The variety of responses and experiences shared truly speak to the complexity of addressing our individuality, intellect, spirituality and humanity in relation to the God who sits on the throne of grace. For we are not yet in Heaven with clarity of heart and mind. We are here, on earth, trying to figure out what to do with ourselves while we watch for His return. The fact that we are struggling as a human family speaks to us not belonging in this existence as it currently stands. Take joy in this. The truth is, God never fails. And whatever capacity that truth is pressing upon each of our lives, it will deliver any who seek with an honest heart what is. Let’s try to understand one another with the compassion of Christ. Don’t be threatoned or entrenched in worry, for God rules with purpose for the love of us all.

Elaine Nelson

January 11, 2015 at 11:54 am

It is sad that so many are insensitive to those who question and find no reason to believe in God. It is not a sin to question or to misunderstand all that has been written about God. If we were to believe all that man has written about Him, including the Bible, there would be numerous reasons to accept tha He tortured, murdered and ordered others to so the same. Or, we could simply reject as untruthful what was written, but then what would there be left to want such a god?

Depending on the Bible, especially what was written in the OT as the true picture of God is frightening. As others have said, “I cannot love the God described by the writers of the OT, but I can love Christ as the Gospels and apostles wrote.”

Doug Yowell

January 11, 2015 at 5:56 pm

“When Ryan made his announcement of “trying on atheism,” I thought that no one who has a living relationship with Jesus (the definition of what it means to be a Christian” can “try on atheism.”

Well said, Inge. The end of the story was at it’s beginning. Christianity is the imitation of Jesus Christ Who claimed to be God. You can’t give up what you never had.

MADELEINE PAGBE

January 12, 2015 at 1:26 am

Why so much publicity for one person’s point of view? faith is personal Is’nt it ? If a long time Adventist Pastor chooses to go from an Christian to an Atheist,I think we ought to pray a lot for that brother. He probably suffers a lot.

Arlin Baldwin

January 12, 2015 at 2:16 am

Brother Bell is quoted as saying, “To me the question of whether there’s a god or not sort of pales in comparison to questions like How should we live with one another? What are we going to do about the climate crisis? ”

This statement by Brother Bell reveals that he is reversing his love priorities; he is turning upside-down the order of the two tables of the Law given on Sinai, and Christ’s two Great Commandments that summarized those two tables.

The 1st Table of the Law was spoken and written first, to show us what our love priorities should be. And Jesus’s summary of the two Great Commandments also followed that same order, putting our relationship to God as our 1st and highest priority, and our relationship to our fellow men as our second priority. The 2nd Great Commandment flows out of and is grounded in the 1st. 1 John 4:17 through 5:2 NLT, helps us clarify what our true love priorities should be:

“God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love becomes more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

“Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.

“If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we can’t see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters.

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments.”

Only as we first love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, can we then truly love his neighbors as ourselves.

Guess

January 12, 2015 at 6:43 am

EG White hints that PASTORS should be fired in Gospel Workers p 197

Most SDA have never read their whole bible. Most have never read Stepes to Christ , Desire of Ages or Great Controversy. If U ever have an urge to read Great Controversy…read .FACING LIFE’S RECORD If Desire of Ages..read NICODEMUS

John

January 12, 2015 at 8:10 am

The Good Lords work is done. No need for Him to “open the scrolls”, to sit in judgement. The “brethren” have done it for Him. RB….. Tried, judged and condemned. The story of Adventism through the ages. I’m astounded as to how other decide what has happened in his life. The best has to be “He was obviously in a crisis and everyone ignored it”…. WOW, talk about arrogance. How about “he asked questions”, and came to a conclusion. Questions which 90% of Adventist are too afraid to ask… afraid that the answers may be contrary to what they were brought up to believe, to what they were taught, answers which may challenge their very being.

It is apparent in the response of so many of the pastors/theologians here that we should not even never question or query the church, its doctrines or the very being of God. “Spectrum and AToday have given this former Pastor much more publicity than is wise”. What may I ask are we afraid of???

I grew up with the concept of an “Adventist movement”, its looking more like an “Adventist quagmire” every day.

God help this church

EM

January 13, 2015 at 8:00 pm

Boyd asks insightful questions. Bell responds with a reasoned explanation of his experience. He was disappointed and acted on it. At year’s end, he presents a mature account as a secular person. As others have said, it’s not a surprise considering his new contacts and lack of personal time. Committing to a year without God is like jumping from a tall building—it’s spiritual suicide. Most believers at some time will have questions of God’s existence; mix this with a life crisis, and it can be a faith disaster. The well-educated have a harder time, because their world view is broader. I can’t relate to being afraid of God. I’ve been afraid of many things, but never God. I wonder if his rigid school background planted seeds of fear and guilt. Some perceptions of God should be rejected. He thinks Adventism’s nonexistence as bad as hellfire, but isn’t this what atheists believe? Concerning evolution, Bell asks, “Wouldn’t you want to know?” Why? I say, does it matter? We cannot know. We get lost in the creation story; because we want to take it literally, and that causes problems for a lot of people. We need to be asking what it means. Whether we believe it literally or not, we miss the mark in obsessing over its correctness and ignoring what it says about God. Even many scientists find more evidence for a Creator than not. It’s sad a pastor can’t find a safe environment for counseling within the church. Bell’s desire to help others on “their journey” is admirable, but carries with it the problem of his bias against the church. What does it mean to “grieve the Holy Spirit,” and has Bell done it? It would seem so if he is comfortable with his choice, and his life goes smoother. But if it does not, God hasn’t given him up. Yet he follows Christ in his compassion and helping those on the margins of faith. I am agnostic concerning Bells’ future.

DeeDee

January 16, 2015 at 4:32 pm

Am I really hearing people say that if others don’t believe as they do that it constitutes proof of a mid-life crisis?

Peta Hay

January 17, 2015 at 2:05 am

I am personally not surprised by this article or that some people have left the church. I am one of them. I could not be a part of a church that considers me sick or flawed. I still believe in God though. I just don’t want to be a part of this SDA church. This is how I define myself: I am loved by God – all other identities are false. I never knew about grace until I left the church – I found grace by reading Philip Yancey and Max Lucado books to name a few. I love that God shows unconditional love and shows grace to people like me. I am not unacceptable to God, He shows no favoritism. I don’t judge Ryan for his journey. All our journeys are different. I wish him well and the best on his journey. I am in no position to judge anyone. I am on my own journey and I don’t know where it will lead. I just have faith that God will find a way for me. For my feelings right now, I do not want to return to a church that does not love me or show love. As for the people who believe that this is the only “true church” I leave this quote: “The clouds roll with thunder that the house of the Lord shall be built on the earth, and these frogs croak in their pond – we are the only Christians”. St Augustine of Hippo.

Interested Friend

January 17, 2015 at 3:34 pm

“He was obviously in a crisis and everyone ignored it.” How can one make that as a valid deduction?

One poster mentioned that when one is absent from church services hardly anyone notices. Unfortunately, true. A health condition required the absence of several weeks by a member in regular attendance. The church has several hundred members. There were three who took time to call and one couple who sent get well cards. A family member was asked about his/her condition. Otherwise zilch. Truly Laodicea. Maranatha

Do we really love Ryan, or are we just offended that he left the fold? It’s easy to be like the envious brother of the Prodigal Son. It seems that the “good” brother didn’t really love his father, much less his prodigal brother. I am not in a position to judge Ryan’s motives. The Father loves him just as much now as when he was an SDA pastor. It is my privilege to love Ryan the same now, too. We like to fix other people so we can feel better about ourselves or to prevent them from doing more damage to our cause. If he returns to a belief in God, I will be delighted. Not because “his problem will be fixed” or he will “finally be doing what is right,” but rather because I think he will enjoy basking in God’s love and grace. Too often we treat unbelievers like fodder for advancement, like I’ve heard Jehovah’s Witnesses advance in rank if they spend enough hours distributing literature. Or like Jimmy the Sunday School boy, who invited his friend to the class because the teacher had offered a prize for bringing a visitor. On the bus ride home, as Jimmy relished his prize ice cream cone in front of the visitor, Jimmy punched the visitor in the nose because the visitor said he wasn’t interested in returning next week to help Jimmy earn another prize. Another problem is that we subconsciously treat celebrity Adventists like trophies of faith. E.g., “See, we must be the true church because the greatest pediatric neurosurgeon is a member.” So, how would we feel if Dr. Ben Carson were to leave the church? Or Governor-General Sir Patrick Allen? Or Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee? Would we resent it as “egg on our face”? Would we try to “win them back” so they could be our celebrity trophies again? Our would we be their loving friend with no strings attached, and pray for them to find fullness of joy in the immeasurable love and grace of Christ? I cannot judge Ryan’s motives. Before I pray for Ryan, I must examine my own motives. And I won’t try to “love him back” to the fold. I will just love him, period. As Amy Grant’s song (The Prodigal) put it, “Even if you never do return, still I will have learned to love you better.”

Elaine Nelson

January 19, 2015 at 2:52 pm

These comments express people’s true feelings and it is most discouraging that at least half feel that Ryan will be lost unless he returns to God and/or the SdA church.

How sad! Some of these expressed so little love as to be devoid of human empathy to even attempt to understand the “deep night of the soul” that many have experienced. Unless one has doubts, there can be no true faith, only assent.

Jesus understands our doubts and fears. He does not condemn us for questioning and doubting. “God never asks us to believe, without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith. . . . God has never removed the possibility of doubt. . . . ” (Steps to Christ, p. 105.)

I have several atheist friends. I can’t prove that God is there; and they can’t prove that He isn’t. It’s a matter of faith. I have chosen to believe, and they have not. I stopped arguing with them long ago. I just love them as friends. My love is not conditioned on whether they choose to believe. My friendship is not conditional upon whether I think I have a chance of “converting” them.

I think belief and unbelief is a continuum, rather than a polar set of absolutes. The most faithful Christians sometimes experience moments of doubt. And some skeptics have moments of wondering if God may be real.

When the father of the demoniac boy expressed doubt (“IF You can do anything, please help him”), Jesus did not scold him. Rather, Jesus said: “‘All things are possible to him who believes.’ The boy’s father cried out and said, ‘I do believe; help my unbelief.'” (Mark 9:22-24.)

Jack Hoehn

January 25, 2015 at 10:37 pm

Thank you for sharing the best way to deal with atheists, love them and keep loving them, after you have both finished your arguments. Invite them to share their experiences in your magazines, ask them good kind but probing questions. I think Atoday is trying to do this with Ryan Bell.

Ryan is a fulfillment of prophecy. How can a ,once, Adventist ever allow his mind to be taken over like this. if he no long want to follow God that is his choice, but don’t set out to mislead others. may God have mercy on you, and I know that means nothing to you. What a total SHAME

Elaine Nelson

March 7, 2015 at 9:06 pm

You can’t understand, can you? Why would anyone want to leave the Adventist church? Then you needn’t worry, you want be on of those. For the rest of us, we have studied and investigated and found that the emperor has no clothes.

I vacated Adventism and its ministry about fifty years ago. I read the prophecy and decided I wanted to give Sharon and others some satisfaction!

Just kidding, Sharon! Just for information, I thought my way out of it. I was raised an SDA, went through its schools through seminary. That’s where my mind was taken over. It eventually took about ten years to liberate it. I came to see there are countless ways to conduct life authentically and Adventism is just one of them. It wasn’t anger, having been mistreated, but just a decision that revoking Adventist teachings was necessary for me.

Labels (agnostic, atheist, Christian, etc.,) are pejorative. They have nothing to do with human value. We all end up eventually recycled into the basic elements of the universe. Our trip to that point is best traveled holding hands with each other. Rightness and wrongness is a human opinion properly confined to the mind, but an unnecessary barrier when transformed into self-righteousness.

I gained much from my 34 year sojourn in Adventism, as I have from my 40 years since. I have had, and have, a wonderful life. I have never urged anyone to leave their faith or recommended my road, since each must chart his own faith course. My guess is that Ryan Bell shares that outlook and has no intention of attracting followers.

So Sharon, practice and enjoy your faith. Our life trip and destiny is the same, only in our heads is there a difference.

Dahana

January 31, 2016 at 5:53 pm

Have we forgotten about: “…He that is without sin among you,let him first cast a stone at her.”; and, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”? After all, there is also, “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”! And, “And He said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; But God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.'” God’s Word teaches us: “Examine YOURselves, whether YE be in THE faith: prove YOUR OWN selves….” (Emphases added.) (John 8:7; 1st Cor.10:12; 2nd Cor. 10:12; Luke 16:15; 2nd Cor. 13:5.) So,… how about it, my fellow blogging-Christians / SDA’s? By God’s grace, please, let us keep one another in sincere, earnest, fervent prayer, that each one who so desires may receive and fully experience the blessings of God’s grace, which He waits and longs to bestow upon ALL who CHOOSE (since, BEING Love, He forces/coerces NO ONE’S will) to put their trust in Him. And to whom it may concern, may the Lord’s richest blessings rest in abundance upon you and yours always.

Donald DeCamp

January 21, 2015 at 9:57 am

When you come to know God as your personal Father, and not just a Supreme Being off in he sky somewhere,you can be very comforatable with Chrstianity. I wouldn’t want to be without my Father far a moment.

I was born and raised a Seventh-day Adventist. When I was 20 at Walla Walla University in 1984, I started thinking about the nature of the universe, and realized that everything is made of atoms that interact in natural forces.

Atoms form into stars, planets, plants, and organic creatures. Things that exist stand out in bounds of time and space, as the word exist is from Latin ex-stare meaning to stand out. Anything that exists is limited in time and space. By definition god is infinite and immortal, so god cannot exist limited by time and space. We could say god subsists, from Latin sub-stare meaning to stand under, so god is substance of existence.

Atoms by themselves have no consciousness, but after they evolve into organic creatures, they form the complex neural networks of brains which are able to generate a virtual world view based on memories acquired through the senses.

Consciousness occurs nowhere in the universe except in the function of our brains.

We are the potential of god who is creating itself through the evolution of our bodies based on our actions. We are all god looking at itself.

The concept of god is based on the tribal leader. There is always a male who takes charge of any group of people. The Idea of the tribal leader is the basis for our concept of god as the leader who organizes our actions and watches over us.

Jesus was a man like all other people who have lived. I have been atheist for 30 years, and I am very happy with my life.

I created a set of moral values for myself. Everything is a structure of atoms. Construction is atoms assembling as a structure, and destruction is atoms dissolving as a structure. I evaluate the goodness or badness of an action I am considering based on whether the result of my action is constructive or destructive. I want my actions to be constructive and nurture life and pleasure.

Simon, I call the Tribal Leader Superguy, the version of God created by Christianity in man’s image, verbalized on/from a defunct cosmology, a barnacle encrusted creation of every projected ignoble human trait imaginable, so that what “god” cannot be now has Superguy as it popular mentally graven image.

As you might notice from my reply a couple of paragraphs above, I, too left Adventism, and actually, mainstream Christianity.

I prefer to resist the atheist label, and all others, as unwelcome pejoratives. I allow a mental reservation of the possibility of there being a life force in the universe responsible for evolution and experienced as love. Perhaps my version of the God of The Gaps! It may (or may not) coincide with your conception of an ephemeral god. Anyway, it has no relationship to the Christian paradigm of salvation and its accouterments which I have already identified as bogus.

Thank you, your posting is clear and well stated and represents some of the thinking that lubricated my exodus.

I am fascinated how in classical Greece the philosophers transformed their cultural view of ‘god’ from the angry thunder-wielding spear-hurling manipulative king on the mountain into the concept of the Prime Mover.

Everything moves, they said, so there must have been a Prime Mover. Today scientists call that the Big Bang.

If christians refocus their religion strictly on ethical behavior based on love for the sake of just treating people with respect, and not base all of it on the fiction of some guy who lived thousands of years ago being a super-god who they claim will raise everyone from the dead and remake earth as a perfect paradise, then christianity will survive.

Discard the fantasy of superman Jesus and keep the ethical values and the weekly gatherings to share human experiences, and christianity will survive.

Neo

March 23, 2015 at 12:43 pm

Is not a surprise the outcome that mr Bell found. Few days ago I decide to take a challenge. “A day with God” That morning a really ask for His direction, talk to him as an old friend, and read the bible with earnest desire to know him. That day I had an unusual serenity, a peaceful joy and overall the day went well. I enjoyed so much that experience that next day I decide to do the same. I found the same resuts but a notice my treatment to other people improve. I decide to go one week, it was the best in years! So I decide to go for one year. Maybe I’ll let you know the results. But until now I’ll not change this experiment/ experience for nothing.

Linda Johnson

April 29, 2015 at 11:15 pm

“I believe, help Thou my unbelief”, is the cry of mankind from the beginning…I go into the night trusting as a child.

Through the ages, the Church, the Bible and believers have been ridiculed, persecuted, burned & bombed, but God’s Church still stands, & the Bible still the most purchased Book in the world. You cannot kill God, and His Will will be done.

Hold on to your faith, and continue to pray for nonbelievers. God is still a God of miracles and grace. We may give up on Him sometime, but He doesn’t give up on us. Like the prodigal son, many lost sons will return. Faith is the Victory.

Daniel

April 30, 2015 at 12:08 am

Ps.14:1-3.

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good. 2 The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. 3 They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one.

Are these harsh words? They should be, because some people just need to know the facts, whether they like it or not.

But to all who Love the Lord Jesus Christ: “Hear the word of the LORD, You who tremble at His word: “Your brethren who hated you, Who cast you out for My name’s sake, said, ‘Let the LORD be glorified,’ But He shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed.” Isa. 66:5

27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, 28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation. Heb.9:27, 28

Keep up the Good fight, my fellow labourers in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yormom

June 8, 2015 at 11:04 pm

Well said Daniel. It if the fool who believes that there is no God. Regarding Bell, how sad that his exploits into atheism have such sympathies on this post. To believe that atheism is true really is the biggest fairy-tail of them all. The very fact that every person has prayed to God at one time or another should be enough proof to the person who has offered such prayer – yet they forget God when things are going well. I wonder if Ryan Bell has regrets for his decision to follow the wide road to destruction rather than the narrow path that leads to life.

Luke 13:24 “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”

Ervin Taylor

June 8, 2015 at 11:25 pm

I’m sorry I missed the comments of Simon and Bugs several months ago. I share the view of Ryan when he posted his disappointment at the kind of comments made by the Bible-quoting “true believers” on this thread. It is the result of the commitment of AT to free speech and “big tent” Adventist Christianity. Thus we must endure all kinds of “interesting” comments.

Ryan Bell was asked to step down from his Seventh-day Adventist congregation in March, after questioning his faith.

Dahana

January 29, 2016 at 11:57 pm

Ryan,sorry you have had so much turmoil. I do have a care for your welfare. We do know each other from Havertown in PA. If you remember me, and care to,please feel free to contact me: 281.651.1950. Some of us may not believe this, but the infallible word of God Almighty teaches that He, our everlasting Father hurts when we, His children hurt. Indeed,He regards each troubled heart with the tenderest solicitude. Also, let us bear in mind, please, that we face a formidable foe,and it is not the SDA church. .. it is not Ryan or any other former SDA. Unless we know who the enemy is, and what battle plans he is up to, he can play us like marbles. For those of us who share this SDA belief, our brother has duly exercised his divinely endowed (‘religious’) prerogative in this choice. Let us allow the mind of Christ in us (which designates us as Christians) to respond in selfless love and, whilst we pray for him to succeed in his search for truth, Show Christian regard and humbly respect his choice – just as Christ does for all of us, each time we make a choice, whether to sin or to obey God… And, just as God Himself will not violate Ryan”s freedom of choice. By His grace, may the Lord make and keep us faithful Ambassadors for Christ, especially in Ryan’s experience, unto His coming. And may He come soon!

jimbob

January 30, 2016 at 7:10 am

Way to go AT for this article and the posting of the comment/ replies.

This forum enhances communication so that people can learn about other Adventists which doesn’t happen with the usual “Happy Sabbath ” greetings once a week. Since most people don’t talk to each other at church and hardly ever talk in Sabbath school…attitudes come out, here, that are usually hid.

With what is mentioned here, one can get clues as to how intolerant, unconsecrated, ignorant, carnal, deceived,worldly and fanatic SDA can be.

jimbob

January 30, 2016 at 7:12 am

I would be thrilled to see the General conference do a mass Survey Monkey of all of the pastors to find out what their position is on various points.

jimbob

January 30, 2016 at 7:19 am

I am glad that Ryan got away from the institutional environment for awhile.

It can give him a better perspective on life. There are pros to SDA but the institution warps the education approaches so they become cons. The basic doctrines and health emphasis are fine. The institutional idolatry is what contaminates members.

Adventist Today (AT) is an independent journalism ministry serving the global Adventist community and readers interested in a reliable source of information about the Adventist faith and institutions. AT publishes in a number of formats: daily on the Web, via Facebook and Twitter; weekly via Email; monthly via PDF; and quarterly in a print journal.